park running beneath. Only a tiny part
of the project had been completed, but
"in one year it's not bad," Piano said. He
recalled his own years studying architec-
ture, in the early-nineteen-sixties in
Milan. He and his fellow-students were
occupying the university, "so that was my
job in the night," he said. "And in the
day I was working in a nice o ce."
"The real point for students like me
was to change the world," he said. "It
was a kind of mad, insane, but great uto-
pia. And I think it's good to grow up
like this, because you grow with this idea
that never leaves you, so when you are
seventy-seven you still feel like a kid and
this is what you want to do. "
---Elizabeth Kolbert
dred dollars, but Eddie encouraged his
parents, frugal Taiwanese immigrants
who owned a steak restaurant, to con-
sider them an investment in his future
career in the N.B.A. His father expressed
skepticism. "No shoe is going to make
you jump higher when you're this fat,"
he said. Later, when Eddie revised his
dream---he wanted to be a sportscaster---
his father spotted an even more insur-
mountable hurdle: "They'll never let
someone with a face like you on television."
Huang did not end up playing for
the N.B.A., but he made it to television.
His path was circuitous: he moved to
New York and, after stints as a corpo-
rate lawyer and a marijuana dealer,
opened Baohaus, a Taiwanese street-
food joint in the East Village, which
paired pork buns with hip-hop music.
That led to his own online show, a food-
themed travel program for Vice, called
"Huang's World," and a book deal. Now
Huang's memoir, a coming-of-age story
titled "Fresh O the Boat," has been
adapted into a sitcom, which will pre-
mière next month on ABC.
"My dad's first reaction was 'I'm so
sorry I brought you to this country!' "
Huang said the other day. "He was com-
ing here as an adult and didn't really know
what it was like for an ABC"---that is,
an American-born Chinese. Huang was
at the basketball courts at Chelsea Piers,
warming up for a game of one-on-one
with his younger brother Evan. Dressed
in a black T-shirt, red Nike shorts, and
magenta LeBron Xs, he dribbled a ball
to the free-throw line, stopped, and did
squats. "I'm thirty-two this year," he said,
"and this is the first year I feel old."
Evan (six years younger, two inches
taller) stood nearby, in matching LeBrons.
He recently completed a degree in global
studies at the New School, having taken
four years o to help his brother open
Baohaus. The brothers wore matching
jade Buddhas on thick gold chains, a gift
from their mother to each of her three
sons. Eddie doesn't take his o : "Some-
thing shitty happened to me the one time
I did."(He wrecked his Jeep Grand Cher-
okee. Then his condom broke.)
Growing up in a predominantly white
neighborhood in Orlando (the family
restaurant has since become a Hooters),
the Huang boys didn't need to be told
they were di erent. "Ching-Chong
Eddie Huang" was a frequent refrain
from classmates, Eddie said. To fit in,
he immersed himself in basketball, a
sport his father loved, too. In a scene
from the pilot episode of "Fresh O the
Boat," the young Eddie (played by the
cherubic Hudson Yang) begs his mother
to buy him "white-people food"for lunch,
then lays out his three-step plan for world
domination: first, get a seat at the table;
second, meet Shaquille O'Neal; third,
change the game.
The sitcom doesn't preserve much
of Huang's archness. "There's definitely
an issue with accuracy," he said. He pro-
vided the voice-over but was not al-
lowed to write the script. "That's the
great irony and metaphor for network
television: even if they have a real story,
they need to cook it into a version that
mass Americans can digest." This is
particularly true of his father's charac-
ter. "I love Randall," Huang said, refer-
ring to Randall Park, the actor who
plays Huang senior. "But they've made
my dad into a neutered tourist in a fanny
pack and stonewashed khakis."
Ten minutes into the basketball game,
Eddie had run up the score to 11--4.The
brothers were playing to twenty-one.
"Um, it's not gonna be a long game,"
Evan said, lifting his shirt to mop sweat
from his forehead.
"I'm naturally very competitive,"Eddie
explained. "But I'm less aggressive when
1
UP LIFE'S LADDER
HOOP DREAMS
Eddie Huang was ten years old when,
he says, he glimpsed his "hopes and
dreams in a box." They were white with
red trim and a silver tongue, and they sat
in the display window of City Sports at
the Belz Outlet Mall, in Orlando, Flor-
ida. The Jordan V sneakers cost a hun-